Bound Homeward
by DameDolcetto
Summary: (Post-game, Fem!MU) She wasn't exactly sure how she expected Naga to be bring her back when she first made the offer. Maybe she had hoped the dragon would simply plop her in the middle of the Shepherds' convoy and be done with it. All she knows is that Naga didn't, instead opting to plop her in the middle of nowhere, and with nothing, at that. Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.


**AN: I finally finished my first playthrough of Awakening the other day and ended up writing this after spending a day binge-reading fanfics. This is actually the first time I tried writing in the style I used for this and I hope someone finds it amusing, despite my own barely-existent sense of humor. Warnings for language. Takes place post-game (ish) through the viewpoint of an unnamed female MU so spoilers. Ye've been warned. No real pairings aside from unfocused mentions of Fem!MU/Chrom.**

**I guess that's that. I don't own Fire Emblem or any of the titles, characters or storylines associated with the franchise excepting my character's personality within this piece of writing. That said, enjoy.**

**EDIT: So, some people apparently were amused by this. Thanks guys. Also, I did a few edits and changed a few things (thanks for the concrit, Solynna - it was well-appreciated) I hope people enjoy it. **

She thinks she's thankful for the second chance of life - really, she is! It's not as if she has a martyr complex or anything. Choosing to sacrifice herself to fell Grima - oh, gods, she _has_ to remember that for Chrom! - hadn't exactly been an easy decision. She didn't want to die. She didn't want to leave everyone - the Shepherds, her family, her _children_ \- behind, even if it was for the greater good. But that was just it. It was for the greater good. What was one life compared to millions? For the longest time, she'd done her best to keep casualties to an absolute minimum, done her best to make it so that there were no casualties _at all_within the Shepherds, but she'd always known that the day would come when she'd be forced to make a sacrifice. If the sacrifice in the question happened to be her, then, well, so be it. Better her than any of the others, right? Aside from that, unbeknownst to them all, she'd even trained up a replacement for her as a tactician in her own beloved son, Morgan, who she knew would eventually surpass her in every way, whether it be in swordplay, or strategy or even in cookery. She knew he could take her place and take it well. So, all things considered, emotions aside, the Shepherds were all set to go on without her.

Emotions aside, of course. It hurt her terribly to have to leave them but she knew it would hurt even more to have been left behind.

So when Naga offered to bring her back, give her a second chance at life, she took it. As much as she prepared the Shepherds as an army to move on without her as their chief tactician, she certainly couldn't prepare the Shepherds as her friends to just move on after losing a friend. That wasn't even beginning to mention how she'd broken her promise not to sacrifice herself. So when Naga appeared to her after what felt like an eternity of sleep, she was all for going back home. After all, the Shepherds needed their tactician, Chrom needed his wife and their children needed their mother. And she needed them all in return.

What she didn't know, however, was the transportation. More specifically, the _lack_of such thereof.

She wasn't exactly sure how she expected Naga to be bring her back when she first made the offer. Maybe she had hoped the dragon would simply plop her in the middle of the Shepherds' convoy and be done with it. All she knows is that Naga _didn't_ do that. Instead, she plopped her off in the middle of freaking nowhere with nothing but the clothes on her back and the weapons in her coat. In other words, nothing she could use for a long walk home.

Emphasis on the word _walk_.

At this point, she's more than willing to fight off Grima again - and with her bare hands if she has to! - for a horse or a pegasus or a wyvern. Hell, she'd even take Demon, that hellborn demon of a pegasi she used to ride into battle during her stint as a Dark Flier, a pegasus she herself named after the four-hundred-and-fifty-nine consecutive falls that damned thing had put her through when she had first reclassed. And yes, she counted. Gods knew how much she had loathed the creature. To be in such a state that she was actually willing to fight off the draconic incarnation of unholiness for a chance to ride the equine incarnation of unholiness was proof positive that her journey hadn't been kind to her mental state. Not that anything ever was.

So now, her feet blistered in their boots, her robes more than a little tattered and her stomach rumbling after nothing but meals consisting of Thoron-burnt venison, Rexcalibur-shredded salads and, on one occasion, Book of Naga-exploded bear, no one should blame her if she's become more than little wordy with her Book of Naga. And stompy.

Quite frankly, it surprises her that she has yet to be smited for blasphemy. Heavens knew she deserved it.

Also, she questions whether it would've killed the Divine Dragon to have given her, oh, I don't know, a _map_ before dropping her off in the middle of nowhere. She's reasonably good at finding her way around, sure, but, truth be told, an Ylissean forest didn't look that different from a Feroxi forest or even a Chon'Sin forest and she questions how in Naga's name did that damned dragon expect her to make her way back Ylisstol when she didn't even know where the _hell_ she was.

Seriously.

That wasn't even beginning to say just how badly unequipped she was for this sort of situation. Back during her travels with the Shepherds, all necessary supplies were kept in the convoy, which meant that they were usually free to carry only what they needed to battle, plus a vulnerary or three. Unfortunately for her, this meant that she was woefully underequipped for travelling on foot for any period of time longer than an hour. After her first day's travels, she can now confidently say that, _f_uck__, hiking is a _bitch_.

At the very least, her travels have taught her lessons she's sure she'll never forget. Namely that swords, while stronger than knives, were (badly) unsuited for the messy task of butchering meat, that Thoron-tomes and Bolganone-tomes, while powerful as _hell_, were unsuited for lighting campfires and that her Book of Naga-tome, while downright glorious to see, was unsuited for killing animals without giving them (very) weird aftertastes. When she gets back to the Shepherds and Ylisstol, and she knows she will, she was going to have to thank Frederick for that lesson in lighting campfires. And in skinning animals. Oh, and she _definitely_ going to have to thank Lissa for giving her those sweets the day before the attack on Grima. Without those sweets, she doubts she would've been able to survive the aftertastes.

Then there was the matter of her _clothes_.

Her suit as a Grandmaster was certainly better than her suit as a Tactician in nearly every way, said suit letting her move more quickly, strike more strongly and cast more powerfully. However, now she knows that there was one thing her Tactician suit had which put everything about her Grandmaster suit to shame.

It. Had. _Pants_.

Yes. Her Grandmaster suit, with all of its improvements to her defense and offense, lacked frigging _pants_, eschewing said pants for an uncomfortably short skirt. During her time with the Shepherds, this had never really been a problem. After all, there, she could reliably count on having the warmth of a fire after a battle. Aside from that, she was reasonably sure that there _at least_ an eighty-seven percent chance of interested male (and sometimes female) gazes finding targets not in her exposed legs but in Tharja's exposed _everything_. The remaining thirteen percent, she could deal with. Mostly with her trusty sword, Demonspanker. Now? Well, putting it frankly, it was _bloody uncomfortable_. During the rainier days, as she could neither Thoron or Bolganone up a nice fire without risking a forest fire or even worse - dammit, she _knew_she should've brought a Fire tome! - nor light a proper one without the proper implements, she's spent many a night huddled in her coat, mud staining her skin, wishing it were warmer.

It didn't help that the suit's armored boots weren't particularly comfortable. In the heat of battle, the discomfort was nothing compared to the bite of a blade or the force of a spell. In the heat of a painfully long walk, however, the discomfort was noticeable and painfully so. So much so that after her first week travelling, her feet have become nothing more than blistered, scar-ridden warzones that actually pain her to see. And she's seen them. Naga damn her, she's seen them. In point of fact, the only reason she hasn't pawned them off at a village was the fact that she doubted she'd get anything more than a half a tiny bullion's worth for them, especially considering how rare it was for someone to receive training as a Tactician, much less a Grandmaster. Oh, and the fact that she has _yet to encounter any sort of human settlement after almost a month of travelling_.

Seriously, what the fuck was up with that?

And then there was the risen. She honestly expected them to stop spawning after they finished off Grima but _nooooo_. The risen still rose and by the gods, did she hate them for it. It didn't help that they never spawned alone, always spawning in groups. Had she still been with the Shepherds or even just Chrom or Morgan or Lucina, those risen would've been nothing more than annoyances to plow through. As it was, she had to be a lot more careful in using her weapons, make sure that her every move counted or else risk losing her weapons before she could manage to scrounge up replacements for them. Fighting off risen with swords and spells was bad enough but fighting them off with her _bare hands? _Sure, she could probably beat the shit out of any attacking risen with her bare hands without taking a _mote_ of damage thanks to the many (_many)_ speedwings and dracoshields she's used over the past few years but the _smell…_ It even _stained_ too! Gods, if she has to wash risen-miasma stains off of her coat _one more time, _she swears that she is going to march _straight _to Mount Prism to give that frigging dragon a piece of her mind. She's grateful to Naga for bringing her back but, really, was dumping her in Ylisstol really _that_ hard to do? Everything would've been _so _much easier if she just dumped her in some field in Ylisse and be done with it. She killed Grima for gods' sake! She killed the divine dragon's rival with her own hands, knowing that doing so would mean her own demise. The least Naga could do was dump her in Ylisstol. At the rate she was going, she was going to kill herself through her own _body odor! _She swears, when she gets back to Ylisstol, her first order of business would be to take a ten-hour long bath. With rose petals, scented oils and maybe even some chocolate eclairs.

She was the Grandmaster of the Shepherds, Slayer of Grima and Queen of Ylisse, godsdammit! She _deserves_ it!

Another annoying thing about the risen was the fact that they seemed to like spawning at night, making it _that_ much harder to get some sleep. After at least _three_ incidents of waking up because some risen spawned next to where she slept, she's started sleeping during day and travelling during night. Sure, it made it a lot harder to see where she was going during the cloudier days, or at least without using a tome but it _definitely _beat waking up because some risen spawned underneath you. This also had the added bonus of being able to travel without sweltering too much under the afternoon sun. The downside was that she's had to use her tomes up a lot more quickly, due to cloudy weather making it hard to see in the dark. Back during her travels with the Shepherds, cloudy days were actually a bit rare. She actually had the luck to be brought back during a cloudy spell. Gods, she swears Naga has an agenda against her. Once or twice, she tried to pry a tome or two from one of her risen foes but she hasn't had much success. The one time she succeeded, she was able to procure an Elwind tome, ironically one of the only tomes that she couldn't use for light or fire-starting. The gods had a vicious sense of humor, to be sure. At the very least, it meant she had one more tome for emergency risen attacks. That was something, at least.

On the plus side, at this point, after weeks and weeks of travel, she's reasonably sure she can give a fairly astute lecture on Naga to anyone. Namely of how the divine dragon was a cruel deity, hear her name and despair, ye who once beareth the Mark of the Fellblood, for though she hath granteth thee a second life, she refuseth to grant thee a bloody map. Or a horse or even a pegasus like Demon.

She's ranted this to her Book of Naga once. She thinks she might've heard a chuckle.

In point of fact, after five weeks of travelling, her sword dull and her tomes ragged, she's not quite sure if she'll make it. And that, perhaps, may just be the cruelest irony of them all, the genius tactician of the Shepherds, the Ylissean Queen, felled not by blades or spells but by a fucking camping trip. _That_ wouldn't have made for a very good ode, to be sure. On the eve of her sixth week, she falls asleep thinking of songs of her demise through improperly purified water, infected meats and risen riding wolves.

This is how they found her, the tactician travel-weary, half-starved and sleep-singing about her death through bad bear meat, all while hugging her sheathed sword as if it were a teddy bear.

When she came to, she first thought that she'd really _really_ like to scream at Chrom for taking so long to find her but, honestly, the minute she saw him and Lissa again, she only just barely managed to stop herself from bursting into tears, sobbing about how much she missed them. As it was, when Chrom pulls her up and tells her that it was all over, she grasps both their hands, smiles and thanks them from the bottom of her heart. Their hands were still in hers when they finally arrived at Ylisstol.

During her journey, she had begun to doubt whether or not they would ever reunite. After arriving at Ylisstol, however, she understands that they would've found her, no matter where she had gone. Invisible ties, bonds, whatever they called it now, she knows that they would lead her to where she belonged. And she's sure that, in the end, everything was worth it just to stand with her friends again.

However, she's also sure that though the strength of their bonds and the power of their love would always be enough to guide her home from anywhere, from Plegia to Ferox or even from beyond the brink, they, along with the whole of creation, wouldn't have been enough to stop her from punching Chrom the minute the words 'you smell' left his lips.

**... in a few weeks, I'll probably regret my decision to post this. Oh well. Until then, feedback is appreciated.**


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